Durango-For high risk merchant accounts

I sell herbal/nutritional products! I learned today that for this reason I am considered a high risk merchant and so ISO/MSP that process electronic payments will not accept me. I was fortunate that one that I sent an email informed of this factor and recommended me to an ISO/MSP that provides merchant accounts. They are called NBS (short for National Bankcard Systems) of Durango. They are an ISO/MSP(registered service provider) of JP Morgan Chase Bank, BankcorpSouth Inc, and US Bank of Minneapolis. I may use them as my processor/merchant account provider! Does anyone know more about them? Can I use them with ZenCart?

P.S. I am still transitioning from my old shopping cart(NetStores) to ZenCart.

When i was setting up i looked around and got a quote from them and i was also in the high risk category but not because of what i sell but because i'm based in the UK and wanted an American merchant account.

I thought Durango's set up fees and percentage they take from sales too high but maybe they will give you a better deal ( they wanted to charge me $250 set up fee and take 7% of each sale and a monthly fee )

I ended up going with Nochex and got a 2.9% per sale deal and a $50 set up fee ( +40cents each sale ) I have no monthly fees to pay but i am limited to VISA or Mastercard for my American customers ( I wanted AMEX too )

You can try PayPal Pro as their rates are pretty good and maybe they will let you set up an account with them.

My advice though is shop around and think carefully before committing to anyone as most have contracts which can lock you in for a year.

Bear in mind you will also need to put a deposit down with some of them to cover chargebacks and this can add up.

Thanks for the info and recommendation. I emailed Durango a few hours ago but now that I know their fees I will not be considering them.

What about accepting echecks; does anyone no of an echeck processor for high risk merchants that offer fair rates/fees?

I looked at Nochex's compare accounts page and when I clicked on accepted territories it read this:
"Nochex Seller account holders are only able to process UK payments. If you require the facility to process UK and International payments, then a Nochex Merchant Account will be better suited to your requirements.
Please note that requesting International payments may increase you retained balance, especially if you want to receive payments from higher risk territories. Please note that Nochex can only process in GB £’s. We cannot process in different currencies."

So with the merchant account I can process U.S. (where I live) payments but not in U.S. $ dollars??? That makes no sense!!! Does anyone know what it means?

You need to be based in the UK to get a Nochex account.

It converts the Dollars payment into UK pounds but takes all currencies including Euro's and Dollars. That means a customer from America pays for the goods in dollars and Nochex accepts it but the payment page shows pounds not dollars ( Zencart will show dollars )

Basically i can accept payments from Americans who have a VISA or Mastercard and the payment page will convert the payment into pounds. No big deal really and i have simply stated this on the payment page and mentioned nothing has changed and the payment remains the same - It allows you to configure the page to suit your site and thus add an explanation that the dollars are being converted by the payment provider into pounds.

I can't use Nochex then, but thanks for the help. I am looking for a U.S. based payment processor for high risk merchants and will reply with information on the right for me when I find it.

durangomerchantservices.com can handle eChecks as well!:clap: